Thursday, August 16, 2012

A Hate Group By Any Other Name: Assessing The FRC Shootings

Let's be clear: Yesterday's shooting
of a security guard at the Family Research Council's offices in
Washington, D.C., evidently motivated by the shooter's anger over the
FRC's ongoing campaign against the LGBT community, was an atrocity that
harmed the cause the shooter espoused. After all, the chief reason
groups are called out as "hate groups" is that the rhetoric they purvey
is so toxic that often it justifies and inspires acts of violence
against vulnerable minorities. To respond to that with an equally insane
act of violence is a betrayal.

The shooting of a security guard Wednesday at the Family
Research Council (FRC) has spurred a torrent of heated accusations from
both sides of the gay rights debate about claims that the conservative
organization is a “hate group.”

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), one of the nation’s
leading opponents of same-sex marriage, told The Hill the shooting was a
direct result of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision in 2010 to
place the FRC on its list of hate groups for its rhetoric on gays.

Brian Brown, the president of NOM, pointed to a recent blog post by
the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the largest gay-rights groups in
the country. The post, “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual
Conference,” called attention to the vice presidential candidate’s
scheduled appearance at the FRC’s national summit next month.

“Today’s attack is the clearest sign we’ve seen that labeling
pro-marriage groups as ‘hateful’ must end,” Brown said in a statement
issued following the shooting.

“For too long national gay rights groups have intentionally
marginalized and ostracized pro-marriage groups and individuals by
labeling them as ‘hateful’ and ‘bigoted.’”

Neither the FBI nor the D.C. police have released any information
about what motivated the shooter, who they placed in custody shortly
after 11 a.m. near the FRC’s headquarters after he wounded a security
guard in the arm.

The HRC’s vice president for communications and marketing, Fred
Sainz, called the accusations “irresponsible” and “spurious” and said
NOM is trying to capitalize on an atrocious attack to further its agenda
of blocking gay rights.

“That’s about as irresponsible as anything I’ve ever heard in
Washington,” Sainz said in an interview. “They have zero facts to go on.
They have no idea who this individual is, what his motivation is, or
where he’s coming from ideologically.”

“The National Organization for Marriage will stop at absolutely
nothing in order to try and win a war that they are losing. The have
beyond zero ethical boundaries,” Sainz said. “They are the lowest of the
bottom fishers.”

It's important to understand, first of all, that the SPLC does not
hand out the designation "hate group" willy-nilly; the organization has
always been clear that such a designation is only handed out to select
organizations who meet exacting criteria.

It's also important to understand why the the SPLC designated the Family Research Council a "hate group"
in the first place -- namely, because their vicious demonization of
gays and lesbians is the kind of rhetoric that regularly and frequently
inspires all kinds of violence directed at those folks, particularly in
the form of hate crimes:

The Family Research Council (FRC) bills itself as “the
leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power,” but its
real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians. The FRC often makes false
claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk
science. The intention is to denigrate LGBT people in its battles
against same-sex marriage, hate crimes laws, anti-bullying programs and
the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

To make the case that the LGBT community is a threat to American
society, the FRC employs a number of “policy experts” whose “research”
has allowed the FRC to be extremely active politically in shaping public
debate. Its research fellows and leaders often testify before Congress
and appear in the mainstream media. It also works at the grassroots
level, conducting outreach to pastors in an effort to “transform the
culture.”In Its Own Words

“Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”
— Robert Knight, FRC director of cultural studies, and Frank York, 1999

“One of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to
abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles
as the ‘prophets' of a new sexual order.”
-1999 FRC pamphlet, Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex with Boys.

“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely
distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a
disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”
— FRC President Tony Perkins, FRC website, 2010

And it's important to remember that the FRC's chief, Tony Perkins,
has a long history of playing footsie with racists and other right-wing
extremists:

In 1996, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Woody
Jenkins against Mary Landrieu, Perkins paid $82,500 to use the mailing
list of former Klan chieftain David Duke. The campaign was fined $3,000
(reduced from $82,500) after Perkins and Jenkins filed false disclosure
forms in a bid to hide their link to Duke. Five years later, on May 17,
2001, Perkins gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of
Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist group that has
described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.” Perkins
claimed not to know the group’s ideology at the time, but it had been
widely publicized in Louisiana and the nation, because in 1999 — two
years before Perkins’ speech to the CCC — Senate Majority Leader Trent
Lott had been embroiled in a national scandal over his ties to the
group. GOP chairman Jim Nicholson then urged Republicans to avoid the
CCC because of its “racist views.”

The Duke incident surfaced again in the local press in 2002, when
Perkins ran for the Republican nomination for the Senate, dooming his
campaign to a fourth-place finish in the primaries.

It's important to remember that calling out organizations and people
for their hatemongering is not itself hatemongering. It is its
antithesis. And yesterday's horror notwithstanding, it must remain that
way.

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.